Hello, One of the important auto blogs threatened to sue me because I gave them credit to their homepage, instead of the article source. Like wtf... Then, they claim copyrights on posts they rewritten from other automotive blogs and press releases, is this possible? Can I get into trouble?
uhh, your grammar makes it hard to understand what you are asking.. 1. An auto blog is threatening to sue you for using their article? They dont own the article, it was from another site. 2. Your site is an auto blog and you are using their rss feed? RSS feeds are meant to be used by others. 3. You copy and pasted the article and added their link on another page? Yes you can be sued, your not saying the article source.. and in sense, claiming as your own by not providing the source.
Adding a link does NOT give you rights to use an article unless the owner has stated that. If they wrote the content, they own it. Yes, they can sue you for using it without their permission.
if it wasn't their content in the first place then they have no copywrite over the content, therefore are unable to sue you - if they want to get you into trouble they'd have to inform the original content producer and in turn drop themselves in the poo. don't worry about it, just ignore them or actually challenge their bluff and ask them to go ahead and inform their solicitor
I agree, we have to think, how about if someone use our content without any permission? you would also do the same as they will do.
As long as the articles were changed or quoted with credit it could be fair use. If you take the whole article or quote their article in full or close to in full you could be in violation of their copyright. It's fine to quote with credit reasonable chunks of articles that you then provide your own commentary and it's fine to take an article and substantially rewrite so that it becomes your own.
Giving credit to original writer or website doesn't mean you can publish anyone's contents. Content owner maybe quite strict about his contents being duplicated, so owner(s) may disagree. Autoblogging is risky, legally you can only duplicate your own contents, not other's contents - no matter how much credit you offer to them. Original unique contents are written by writers and it takes much time, research and writing skills - you're duplicating their labor with a robot, anyone might disagree to this and you have to understand this issue. Even if they don't sue you, their complaint can cancel your web hosting account and your domain name too. It's wise you talk to them and take down their content and carry on with other's content until some more people threaten you
If you have fully copied the article then you should remove it to avoid any types of problems with it.